WALKING THE FIRE LABYRINTH
A Winter Solstice Encounter
Celebration of the Celtic year is a familiar experience as for some years I have participated in communal, ceremonial and solitary honorings of this time. Personally, its important to me as a marker of change in my life: 10 years since moving to the mountains, one month to my birthday, one month to an anniversary of the fire that destroyed my home and transformed my life.
In my mountains community it is celebrated with a festival, people dress up, art exhibitions are held, a parade down the main street takes place honoring and promoting diverse issues of concern to the community, concerts and choirs abound and there is a general air of festivity and happiness as friends greet each other with “Happy Winter Magic!�?BR>
This year a friend mentioned an event that was to be held further out west a week after our winter magic festival. She described it as a fire labyrinth ritual in which a stone labyrinth would be lit at night to be walked with conscious intent and so mark the end of the year and begin a new one, a shedding of the old and birthing of the divine child.
Though I had experienced fire trauma 3 years before, I could not resist the pull and possibility of such a powerful event and it was indeed transformative just like my house fire.
The drive out to the place was delightful, just on sunset with light rain falling, soft rainbows appeared over the hills through which we were travelling; black cockatoos and kangaroos told us this was indeed the Australian countryside.
This country held personal history for me, a hidden history as my Chinese great-grandfather Yap John Hong, married my Anglo-Celtic grandmother, Margaret Lawrence in 1863 at Pipeclay Creek, now called Eurunderee. The Chinese history is still hidden and a lot of it was actively destroyed through the racism that erupted then and continues in the Australian psyche today. My Great Grandfather migrated to Australia in 1850 as a “coolie�?or indentured laborer –another term for slave- from a place called Xiamen (previously Amoy). In looking through family history records over many years I have noticed that individual family members changed the illustrious name of Hong to Hone, Horne, Hanes in the hope of avoiding the attraction of racism . And I can sense the shame and sorrow of this act of survival which permeated the emotional and psychological consciousness of the family.
We reached the property where the event was to be held a little after sunset, it about 50 people had gathered and were sharing in the early dinner. A campfire had been going for some time and the minute I saw it, was reminded of the power of fire and its capricious behavior during my “house burning�?BR>
This event was an informal affair, no structured ritual here just a leading to the stones when adequately dark, a mention of the solstice, and then drenching of the rags around the stones with kero. Three people were the torchbearers who lit the labyrinth in different parts. The wooden arched entrance was also set ablaze.
We were told by one of the organizers that we were safe, the fire could not touch us or hurt us. I wanted to yell out “NO, That’s not true.I know what it can do. Burn us alive!" but didn’t. Instead I concentrated on managing my fear and going through with this. There was no turning back.
My friend entered first and I soon after, with little flames flapping on either side of a narrow path, we started. In my mind I buckled down, determined to get through for the fear of being burnt was raging now and it felt like the fire was saying ”We meet again Kate. You have unfinished business with me."
Since that day when I lost most of my possessions and almost my life, fire has taken on a living presence, for me it is no longer an element but a force that seeks to personally engage with me. An affirmation came to mind quickly “we must walk our path with deliberation and care"�?as I became aware of how narrow our path in life is, how easy to drop off one side or the other, to be deflected. And I then felt how fragile is life on this planet with extinction awaiting either side of what the cosmologist Brian Swimme calls the “space –time curve.�?BR>
We reached the centre quite quickly and I felt the need to touch the stone placed there. Instead of an ending, that became the beginning to this circular journey. I had not seen the labyrinth in daylight so had no sense of how big it was or how long it might take to walk through it. I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
Though the flames never lost their power for me, I started to feel the presence of my guides and their hands on my shoulders. I was not going to burn or even be singed! I would survive this and through facing the fire would be released even more from its thrall. As we walked in silence and the journey became more familiar, I was able on occasion to shift my gaze to the stars.
At the beginning of the evening in the soft blue light a number of lights emerged. By now, three hours later, the sky was crowded with strong planetary lights and starry cloud clusters. This sky must have been so familiar to our ancestors, who would have looked upwards as much outwards at each other and downwards at the earth. I felt comforted by the change in the night sky and started to feel more at ease on this journey which, twisting and turning, seemed to carry on outside the boundaries of time. I did not try to work out a logic to where I had been or where I was going, just concentrating on each step. At last we reached the exit where we returned to the campfire or went our separate ways into the darkness.
I returned to the campfire to ponder and communicate with fire in another form and felt that something had altered within me forever. Was it a release? The start of something? A birthing of a divine child of promise? A seed so deeply planted in darkness? Or the liberation of a part of me held in darkness for years? I did not know, do not yet know; I am unable to articulate, choose or shape the words for such a fragile, subtle sense of something but it is there and I now trust will emerge at the right time.
The next morning, unable to sleep well in a another’s house, I rise early and after tea and toast and sharing reflections with my friend, decide to walk into town. It's not far, just 10 minutes away and as I walk in the Sunday morning silence, become aware that I am going to meet myself from eight years back. Carolyn Myss says we weave our spirits into places, times, events. Eight years ago I visited the town with my then partner. I can see myself at that time on the motel verandah sharing a wine and do not like what I see; I am unhappy, judgmental, deluded, very wounded, making bargains with life and myself about how things should be, how I must be. Within, I yearn for the spiritual, to live for spirit! To give up the workaholism and worldly success but I do not believe that I am worthy of that life. The fire was the gift from the goddess who said "I have heard your deepest wish and will take away every distraction so that there is nothing in your life but spirit!"
Later in a meditation, I become aware that the fire was liberation, not limitation. In spite of all the hardship, difficulty, and struggle since that event were I to be given the choice of which path, this time would choose the fire experience which gave me back to myself in a rich, full, hard, and challenging life.
Walking back to the house on that Sunday after my latest fire experience I feel held between two histories, ancestral and personal, and somehow sense that fire –either ritual or accidental- contains the capacity to heal even the deepest and oldest wounds.
Katoomba, Blue Mountains Australia - July 4th 2005
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